The United States was founded and built by rugged individualists, people who supremely valued personal freedom – the freedom to develop their ideas, strengths, skills and talents to the best of their abilities in the pursuit of better lives for themselves, their families and future generations. They were willing to take profound risks, like leaving their home continents for distant and unknown shores, like standing up to and defeating the most formidable foes of their times, and they literally tore their nation apart and pulled it back together again to eradicate the scourge of slavery. They created a nation that surpassed all others in industrial, cultural and intellectual productivity, in prosperity and peacekeeping power, and in personal freedom – the single greatest nation in human history in which to pursue happiness – and understood that that’s all freedom meant, freedom to pursue happiness; none among them was entitled to actually capture it. But the further the nation has progressed beyond the early struggles that paved the way to its prosperity, the easier it has become for its people to perceive their “fair shares” of its prosperity less as privileges and more as entitlements.

As successful as America became in an age of personal responsibility, over my professional lifetime I’ve seen it drifting toward an age of entitlement. I’ve seen it as I’ve assessed and counseled adults, adolescents, couples and families as a psychologist. I’ve seen it as I’ve served as an expert witness in legal cases where parties’ states of mind have been pivotal. I’ve seen it as I’ve negotiated and mediated disputes and represented clients in civil and criminal court as a lawyer. I’ve seen it as I’ve taught courses to undergraduate students and given lectures to groups of accomplished professionals from all over the country. I’ve seen it as I’ve run my own businesses and advised leaders of businesses large and small on how to solve productivity problems. I’ve seen it as I’ve advised legislators on how to draft laws to rein in various types of destructive behavior. I’ve seen it as I’ve analyzed virtually every major crime story that has made national news for the better part of a decade. And I’ve seen it as I’ve traveled the world comparing what’s happening elsewhere to what’s happening in America.

You’ve seen it, too. You’ve seen it in skyrocketing rates of parental abandonment. You’ve seen it in pervasive excuse-making by criminals who consciously choose to behave in heinously destructive ways and then, when caught, attribute their behavior to bad parenting, historical oppression, some compulsive behavioral “disease” like addiction, or psychosis. You’ve seen it in the escalating, unsustainable debt that Americans are carrying, both individually and collectively. You’ve seen it in the increasing numbers of claims for disability and other forms of public assistance when, in fact, the number of adult Americans who are mentally or physically incapable of sustaining themselves and their children are, thankfully, relatively small. You’ve seen it in the ever-increasing acceptance of recreational drug use, of sexual promiscuity, of obesity as yet another “disease,” all of which are driven by hedonistic impulses over which people are no longer expected to exert much, if any, self-control.

And American culture increasingly facilitates such destructive trends. Even Americans who haven’t participated in them directly have often participated indirectly by allowing personally irresponsible behaviors to become social norms. Americans today have grown to accept all kinds of behaviors that previous generations identified as destructive and therefore ostracized. America’s founders wisely understood that the law can do only so much to promote responsible behavior, since a free society’s behavioral norms will be determined far more by what people are willing to accept than by what their government will ever effectively prohibit. But fewer parents are present today in American homes to talk with kids about the values that built the nation, and many who are present are nevertheless either too self-absorbed or too misguided to bother. On top of that, fewer and fewer Americans are regularly attending church services, where behavioral restraint and interpersonal obligation are staples.

Meanwhile, in our public schools, fewer and fewer teachers seem to desire or dare to go anywhere near an endorsement of traditional American values in the classroom for fear of being accused of moralizing and getting fired or sued. The American media generally don’t help matters, either. Virtually everywhere they go today, young Americans are bombarded by music, TV, movies and advertising, all of which insidiously reinforce instant short-term gratification, often in the context of largely undeserved athletic and entertainment hero worship. And if Narcissus were alive today, social media no doubt would be his “reflecting pool” of choice. All of these conditions reflect and facilitate a pervasive cultural shift away from personal responsibility, toward entitlement. And based on my years of comparative study and professional practice involving people, public policy, and productivity, I’ve come to believe that entitlement is the single most destructive common thread that binds America’s social ills.

So is there a cure? Yes, wherever possible, we need to reassert personal responsibility for our problems and their solutions. Research both in positive psychology and the emerging discipline of behavioral economics dovetails nicely with most major world religions to suggest that the acceptance of obligation to identify your unique abilities and to develop those abilities so that you contribute unique value to something larger than yourself generally maximizes your chances for material prosperity as well as personal fulfillment, especially when those rewards are surveyed through a lens of gratitude. I remain highly optimistic that if enough of us are motivated to do so, we can still swing our cultural pendulum back in the direction of personal responsibility, thereby achieving better, more productive lives individually and a better, more productive country collectively. “Stop Moaning, Start Owning” is dedicated to that effort.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/stop-moaning-start-owning/feed/0Parenting – not poverty, privilege, prejudice or policehttp://www.wnd.com/2014/08/parenting-not-poverty-privilege-prejudice-or-police/
http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/parenting-not-poverty-privilege-prejudice-or-police/#respondThu, 21 Aug 2014 23:19:26 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=1163065In 2013, Ethan Couch, age 16, stole beer, got drunk, drove, killed four people and seriously injured two others near Fort Worth, Texas. In 2014, Michael Brown, age 18, used marijuana, stole cigars, got into an altercation with a police officer and was shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri. It’s a tale of two teens, one white, one black, one rich, one poor, one urban, one suburban, one still alive, one deceased, but each at the center of a deadly crime tragedy. Having covered crime tragedies on national television for the better part of a decade, I can tell you that despite racial, regional and socioeconomic differences, teens who commit crimes and end up at the centers of such tragedies, far more often than not, have this in common: deficient parenting.

And before I go any further, no, I’m not referring now to any specific teen; yes, I understand that the most recent teen to make major national headlines at the center of a crime tragedy hasn’t even been laid to rest yet; and no, I have no desire to pile additional grief upon any deceased teens’ parents. This needs to be said, though, and my aim in saying it is to extract some good from tragedy if possible, to help other teens’ parents not to have to attend their teens’ funerals, or their teens’ trials. So, with that in mind, here are some questions every American parent of a teenager should be asking him/herself right now:

1) In general, have I raised the kind of person who goes through life recognizing that he is part of something larger than himself and who therefore thinks about the impact of his or her actions upon others and tries hard not to harm anybody? (And if you answer “yes,” but you’ve been absent from your teen’s home more often than not, or if you have five different surnames residing under your roof, then I have to wonder whether you’ve really focused enough of your attention on your teen to have modeled this principle effectively or whether you’ve instead been wrapped up in your own pursuits and have, perhaps, instilled some angry narcissism in your teen in the process.)

2) In general again, have I raised the kind of person who respects the rights of others and the law that exists to protect those rights? (And if you answer “yes,” but you’ve been violent around your teen or been in trouble with the law yourself, then I have to wonder whether you’ve modeled this principle effectively.)

3) Specifically now, have I raised the kind of person who thinks it’s not OK to get intoxicated illegally? (And if you answer “yes,” but you’ve driven while intoxicated or used an illegal substance, and your teen knows about it, or if you’ve told your teen that it’s fine with you when people violate our drug laws, then you haven’t modeled this principle.)

4) Specifically again, have I raised the kind of person who’d never dream of walking into a store and stealing something? (And if you answer “yes,” just consider this – in a relatively recent anonymous survey of 30,000 American teens, a third of them acknowledged having stolen something from a store within a year of taking the survey.)

5) Specifically once again, have I raised the kind of a person who, if a law-enforcement officer told him or her to stop or to get out of the street, he or she would comply with the officer’s instruction immediately and respectfully? (And if you answer “yes,” but you, yourself, have modeled disrespect for law-enforcement officers – incidentally, Couch’s father was arrested this week for allegedly claiming to be a police officer during a domestic disturbance – then I, and more importantly, you, have to wonder.)

If you’ve answered “No,” or “I don’t know,” to any of the above questions, then you have a problem – your teen may be at serious risk, and the solution likely requires substantial time and communication with your teen and substantial structure and discipline in your teen’s life, which you can effect whether you’re black, white, rich, poor, urban, or suburban.

The Los Angeles Unified School District recently announced that, in response to mounting numbers of relatively low-level crimes committed within its schools and to a racial disparity among the recipients of citations for such crimes, the district’s in-house police are now going to – wait for it – stop citing students for a number of common offenses. That’s insane. If kids aren’t getting structure and discipline in their homes, then removing it from their schools isn’t going to help them; it’s just going to allow district leaders to point to reduced numbers of offenses and pat themselves on the backs for their utterly fictitious “success” at the kids’ expense.

If there’s a racial disparity among the recipients of citations, but there’s a similar racial disparity among the student body, and/or there’s a similar racial disparity among the students committing the offenses, then stopping the issuance of citations so that no race appears to be behaving worse than another isn’t justice; it’s injustice, both to the offenders and to the victims of their offenses. And if there is a racial disparity among the students committing the offenses, consider this: In many parts of America, and in America overall, there happens – for reasons you can ponder – also to be a profound racial disparity when it comes to out-of-wedlock parentage. Out-of-wedlock parentage often translates into negligent and absentee parenting, especially by fathers, who – again for reasons you can ponder – throughout human history, until recently, have played important roles as disciplinarians of kids, especially teens.

In my state, Kansas, many in this election year are demanding that the state throw more money at public schools, yet Catholic schools consistently produce better results with substantially less funding per pupil, and it’s not because Catholic schools only accept the best and brightest kids – I went to both public and Catholic schools; there were idiots and geniuses both places, and there were good and bad teachers both places. The big difference in results is neither money nor selectivity; it’s parenting. In my experience attending both types of schools and counseling students from both types of schools, it’s significantly rarer for parents of kids in Catholic schools (who sacrifice to pay private-school tuition on top of public-school property taxes) than for parents of kids in public schools to be dangerously disinterested and disengaged in their kids’ academic and general development.

So, again, neither my message nor my timing here is intended to pile grief on the parents of any particular deceased teen. I’m saying these things because they need to be said, because I don’t want your teen to shoplift liquor, get drunk, drive, and kill people; because I don’t want your teen to get high, rob a store, get into an altercation with a police officer and get shot; because if any of that happens, as much as you’ll wish to blame someone or something else, the precipitating problem probably will have far more to do with your parenting than with poverty, privilege, prejudice or the police. That’s simply the truth, and if we don’t acknowledge it, then we’re acting just like L.A. School District administrators, absolving responsible parties of responsibility so we can feel good about ourselves at kids’ expense – and that’s what really needs to stop in America.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/parenting-not-poverty-privilege-prejudice-or-police/feed/0Why capitalism is Christianhttp://www.wnd.com/2013/11/why-capitalism-is-christian/
http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/why-capitalism-is-christian/#respondFri, 29 Nov 2013 23:26:55 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=579221I’m a non-Catholic who generally admires Pope Francis, but he loses me when “social justice” morphs into social-ism. While I’m loath to pick an argument with the pope on a theological matter, I believe that in his admirable zeal to minister to the needy, his apostolic exhortation (the first major written work of his papacy, delivered Tuesday) propagates fallacies about both Christianity and human nature that could confuse and conflict Christians, particularly Catholics, about capitalism.

The pope calls for governments worldwide to get more actively involved in restraining capitalism so as to divide societal wealth more evenly among their citizens. As far as I know, Jesus of Nazareth, upon whose teachings all Christianity, including Catholicism, is based, never advocated forced charity (which is what socialism entails), but here are five important additional, secular points, based on my combined expertise in people, public policy and productivity, plus my firsthand observations of how over 35 different societies distribute goods and services:

1) In Jesus’ (human) lifetime, government wasn’t really administering charity. Today, in the USA, rightly or wrongly (I’d argue wrongly) large percentages of citizens’ incomes are already being taxed by the government and redistributed to low-income people in various forms. The problem in the USA isn’t too little generosity – it’s too much generosity, of the coerced, indiscriminate type administered by government (e.g. we have one-sixth of the country on food stamps, which is far more than statistically can’t provide for themselves). If I stand in the middle of Beverly Hills and offer free pizzas to anyone who “needs” one, I’ll be out of pizzas quickly, and probably not one recipient will have truly “needed” the pizza.

There should be no government guarantees of charity. Those in need should have to appeal to their fellow Americans for assistance, which the truly needy would still get (because humans, especially Americans, are characteristically generous), but which those who aren’t truly in need and those whose needs are of their own making, e.g. drug and alcohol abusers, might not get – and in the absence of a guarantee thereof, those who can work would be much more likely to do so, at least enough to sustain themselves. A little fear is a good motivator – if you erase all fear about where people’s next meals are coming from, as we’ve essentially tried to do via government programs like food stamps, you also erase a lot of motivation to work.

And our Founding Fathers got that. As a lawyer, I know there’s some historical confusion among Americans about what they meant when they wrote, “promote the general welfare” into the Constitution as a proper undertaking of government. They meant for the federal government to mount a collective response in the face of a hurricane like Katrina, or the outbreak of a deadly disease like SARS, that the individual states and localities couldn’t be expected to handle and coordinate on their own. They did not mean for the federal government to be involved in guaranteeing individual Americans housing, food, clothing, etc. on an indefinite basis.

2) People will be less productive if they’re not able to accumulate anything above and beyond their needs – they’ll produce what they need and then relax. That’s not idolatry of money; it’s just plain human nature.

3) Accumulation of excess wealth by individuals is necessary to provide the investable resources that create the business enterprises that give most people their incomes. (Poor people don’t do a lot of hiring.)

4) Accumulation of excess wealth by individuals is also necessary to allow there to be purchases of nonessential goods and services, which is what many Americans spend their working lives producing. Imagine how many fewer jobs there’d be if basic needs were the only things produced and consumed in our economy (and spending on goods and services, both needs and wants, is a good thing in that it requires and rewards people for using skills, talents, gifts, etc. to create things of value – gifts don’t do that).

5) Some giving is good, but not all. Some helps people, but some simply enables people not to develop their own skills, talents, gifts, etc. as fully as they otherwise might. Given the small percentage of human beings (or any species) who are developmentally incapable of sustaining themselves and their offspring, there really should be no need for a great deal of charitable sacrifice in a capitalistic nation that affords all people opportunities to profit from their own skills and hard work. If the average adult citizen (taking into account both free riders and big givers) sacrificed just a little, voluntarily, which I believe they would, it should be more than enough to carry the relatively small group of truly self-insufficient citizens – if those were the only citizens being carried – without cutting substantially into the lifestyles of the carriers.

And that’s true even on a global scale. The reason there’s poverty in many parts of the world is not because the citizens of capitalist nations aren’t generous enough. It’s not because there’s unequal distribution of wealth. It’s because there’s unequal distribution of capitalism. The problems in those nations are systemic, often involving a lot of corruption, totalitarianism, anarchy, lack of respect for human and property rights, sometimes religious and cultural norms that subjugate and relegate huge segments of the populations, e.g. women, to low or no earning power, etc. We can help out on a temporary basis after a tsunami or an earthquake, as we always do, but we can’t fix those kinds of systemic problems with money.

Bottom line: Capitalism is Christian, because it incentivizes people to do the most with their skills, talents, gifts, etc.; it distributes goods and services far more effectively and fairly than government ever could; and the accumulation of wealth that it produces actually leads to more effective charity – voluntarily given – than government could ever force. It’s between each individual and the Deity (not for the government), then, to strike the right balance between saving, investing, spending and giving.

As Jesus’ words and deeds seem to very wisely suggest, the choice to help others gains its moral meaning when it represents an exercise of an individual’s free will, not when it’s coerced by government. Christians – Catholics especially, I think – need to keep this straight, because if they invite the government to impose their religion upon others, they necessarily also invite it to impose others’ lack thereof upon them. For instance, when Christians petition the government to impose their social-justice values upon others in the form of tax-and-spend wealth redistribution, it becomes difficult for them to then credibly object to the government similarly imposing others’ values about, for example, purchasing contraception coverage, upon Christians. In capitalistic terms, that’s a bad tradeoff – far better to let the Church do what it was founded to do and let government do what it was founded to do (which was not to redistribute the wealth of the citizenry).

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/why-capitalism-is-christian/feed/0The new 'ADD': America Dysmorphic Disorderhttp://www.wnd.com/2013/11/the-new-add-america-dysmorphic-disorder/
http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/the-new-add-america-dysmorphic-disorder/#respondThu, 21 Nov 2013 00:40:24 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=572435There’s a psychological condition called Body Dysmorphic Disorder, or BDD, in which afflicted individuals perceive their bodies as profoundly distorted, deeply flawed and in need of never-ending remediation. Although I never treated him personally, I believe the late entertainer Michael Jackson exhibited indications that he may have suffered from BDD. Jackson’s numerous cosmetic facial surgeries suggested a pathological zeal to alter his visage as much as possible from the original, when most observers, I think, would concur that the original was relatively defect-free.

I mention this because many Americans who identify themselves as “progressives” these days seem to perceive their country much like Jackson seemed to perceive his face – profoundly distorted, deeply flawed and in need of never-ending remediation. Accordingly, these progressives seem to perceive “progress” as the alteration of America as much as possible from the original. Their rejection of traditional America is evident across the board – economically, culturally and geopolitically – and profound perceptual distortions are apparent in all three spheres.

Progressives reject classical economic theory in favor of Keynesian economic alchemy. Picture America’s GDP as a bucket of water. Keynesian theory holds that one can pour some of the water into a second bucket, then back into the original bucket, stir it around, and end up with more water than there originally was. That’s not much different from the alchemists of old thinking they could synthesize gold from relatively worthless substances (or, for that matter, from today’s progressives thinking they can give health insurance to millions of low-income Americans, expand benefits for everyone and reduce overall health-care costs).

Progressives also reject traditional American cultural values. They embrace the equation of the government’s interest in sanctioning heterosexual and same-sex marriages, yet they paradoxically reject the notion that our law should do much, if anything, to enforce marriage commitments of any type. Thanks to progressive “no-fault” divorce legislation in virtually every American jurisdiction, American law generally now will do more to enforce a gym-membership contract than a marriage contract. And progressives embrace legalization of dangerous drugs for both ostensible medicinal and recreational uses.

Progressives also reject the projection of American strength globally. If America is to lead the community of nations at all, they prefer that it “lead from behind.” In other words, they prefer that America project weakness in the name of “co-dependence” upon weaker nations. They see America not as an historical liberator of nations but as an oppressor of nations. Thus, they are ashamed of their country and prioritize apologetic appeasement of other, even aggressor, nations over the resolute promotion and defense of liberty. In essence, they prioritize America being liked over it being respected, and certainly over it being feared.

Problem is, just as with Jackson’s original facial structure, there’s a lot more right than wrong with traditional America. And just as Jackson became the “King of Pop” with his original face, America became the greatest nation in human history with – and, I would argue, because of – its traditions, to wit: The productivity of generations of traditional, stable, sober families has built America into an economic and geopolitical superpower whose dependable projection of strength has stabilized the world, and the only way to add water to our metaphorical GDP and health-care buckets is to incentivize greater productivity using classical economic principles.

Thus, as a psychologist, lawyer and MBA who sees traditional America clearly, I hereby propose a redefinition of “ADD” as “America Dysmorphic Disorder” to apply to individuals who see traditional America as profoundly distorted, deeply flawed and in need of never-ending remediation. While most conventional ADD – Attention Deficit Disorder – diagnoses are bogus, my redefined version actually will fit millions of Americans, progressives mostly, and rather alarmingly, I believe our president exhibits indications that he may quite possibly be afflicted.

The president seems to admire an America, one he hopes to create, but unlike past presidents of both parties, he doesn’t seem to admire the America that traditionally has existed, which is curious given the opportunities traditional America has afforded him. America’s past isn’t perfect. For example, I don’t begrudge any American, especially one of African descent, indignation about slavery, whether his ancestors were here then or not, but in skipping the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, the president seemed loath to celebrate how the country literally tore itself in half and put itself back together to right that wrong.

The curability of ADD depends upon how deeply an individual case is rooted in ideology. The president may be incurable, but many cases can be cured and many more prevented by education – about the values and practices that made America great. These days, Chinese college students often articulate better than American students why progressive ideals like tax-funded economic “stimulus” and “health insurance for all” don’t operationalize well in the forms of “shovel-ready” projects and distribution websites. If Chinese students continue to understand America better than many Americans do, then ADD can only be expected to spread.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/the-new-add-america-dysmorphic-disorder/feed/0'Forgive me, Doctor, for I have sinned'http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/forgive-me-doctor-for-i-have-sinned/
http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/forgive-me-doctor-for-i-have-sinned/#respondTue, 02 Apr 2013 23:47:59 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=404809… saith the patient. Then saith the doctor, “Fear not, my patient. If it felt right to you at the time, then it was right. Now go, and feel guilty no more.”

As silly as it sounds, interactions amounting essentially to the above are happening in psychotherapists’ offices across the United States millions of times per week, probably even as you read this. Over the past few decades, fewer and fewer Americans have attended regular church services; rampant divorce has put fewer parents in American children’s homes to teach, let alone to exemplify, strong morals and values; and public-school teachers have regressively shied away from teaching morals and values in their classrooms lest they be accused of proselytizing students. It’s no wonder, then, that millions of Americans in search of answers to moral dilemmas have been turning increasingly to psychotherapists, America’s new “secular clergy.”

But the typical therapist’s office is scarcely a house of moral certitude. More typically, it’s a relatively amoral house of orthodox nonjudgmental-ism, and that’s really no surprise, either. In my experience, many if not most people who train to become therapists are drawn to their profession in significant part by a belief that much of human behavior is mystery, shaped largely by extrinsic forces beyond the conscious awareness, let alone the control, of the individual. These therapists tend to be secular humanists whose well-intentioned, overarching goal is each individual patient’s “happiness.” As such, they tend to convey unconditional positive regard for their patients and to conceptualize negative emotions like guilt and shame as impediments to happiness that must be eradicated regardless of their geneses.

A couple of years ago, I read a column written by a woman who had pursued an extramarital affair and had ultimately abandoned her husband and children to be with her affair partner. The author referred to her therapist as having been the “shaman” or “spiritual guide” who had helped her to find the “courage” to pursue happiness with the affair partner. Then, over this past Easter weekend, I read a column written by a different woman who had been in a sexual relationship with a single father and had developed an attachment to his young child before deciding to end the adult relationship and to instead fulfill her desire for biological motherhood through artificial insemination. The latter column’s author described having asked her therapist for advice on whether and how to “break up” with the man’s 2-year-old child and having been counseled simply that it was “folly” to put the child’s happiness above the author’s own happiness.

Think this kind of adult self-worship, validated by therapists, isn’t trickling down to America’s kids? I recall a therapy session that I conducted, several years ago now, in which one of my own teenage patients disclosed to me that she had been smoking marijuana with friends on weekends. I asked her whether she knew about the potential effects of drugs on her body and mind and whether she knew how her drug use might be expected to affect her relationships with her parents, her relationships with her peers, her reputation and legal record, her current and future education, her current and future employment, etc. Eventually, she covered her ears and yelled at me, “Stop it, you’re making me feel bad!” to which I replied, “It’s about time.”

Bad feelings aren’t all bad. Emotions like guilt and shame are actually some of the first indicators of a need to reflect upon and to think about our actions, to apply our intellect – that uniquely human gift that allows us to discern right from wrong even in the absence of extrinsic moral guidance – to our past, present and potential behavior. Those emotions help us to recognize when our behavior is destructive, of ourselves and/or of others, and to make both appropriate amends and course corrections. Yes, they can outlast their usefulness and become unproductive, but in today’s American culture, I believe that we have more people who aren’t feeling enough guilt and shame than we have people who are harboring excessive amounts of either.

In my professional experience, a major problem with Americans turning to therapists for moral guidance is that the average therapist is neither well-trained nor inclined to teach patients to use negative emotions productively. Instead, the average therapist is trained and inclined to eradicate negative emotions as illness and/or as antithetical to happiness. If a patient’s negative emotions are spontaneous or extrinsic in origin, then I’m fine with that approach. But if negative emotions are the products of the patient’s own destructive behavior, then I believe that the true folly is the pursuit of the patient’s happiness as an overarching goal when true happiness is not an end but rather a byproduct of purposeful, productive behavior (just ask any of the numerous celebrities who appear to “have it all” yet have attempted suicide to escape the painful “emptiness” of their lives).

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that Americans shouldn’t see therapists if they experience symptoms of mental illness, or if they value an objective and supportive sounding board when immersed in difficult situations, or if they need subject-matter expertise on proven-effective ways to solve personal, interpersonal, parenting, or professional problems. What I am saying is that Americans shouldn’t rely on the typical therapist for the solutions to dilemmas that are essentially moral rather than clinical. Therapy generally is not a good shortcut around the concerted intellectual, interpersonal, introspective and spiritual effort involved in acquiring and applying a framework of morals and values within which to live a purposeful, productive life. Like a great clergy member, I believe it is possible for a great therapist to help one acquire and apply such a framework, but in my professional experience, therapists both inclined and equipped to do so are few and far between.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/forgive-me-doctor-for-i-have-sinned/feed/0Like Uncle Sam – with 8 fewer zeroeshttp://www.wnd.com/2013/03/like-uncle-sam-with-8-fewer-zeroes/
http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/like-uncle-sam-with-8-fewer-zeroes/#respondThu, 07 Mar 2013 01:11:55 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=385803Imagine a guy named Sam who earned approximately $23,000 but spent approximately $35,000 in 2012, while already in debt to the tune of over $160,000. And imagine that in 2013, Sam plans to earn a little more, approximately $24,000, but to spend approximately $36,000, taking his total debt well over $170,000. Now, imagine saying to Sam, “Hey, your spending and borrowing aren’t sustainable. Pretty soon, nobody’s going to lend you any more money, at least not at an interest rate that you can possibly afford to pay. In fact, it’s already questionable whether you’ll ever be able to pay off the debt you’ve already accumulated. You need to cut your spending right away.”

Imagine that Sam then says, “I don’t know how I can possibly do that. I’ve gotten accustomed to having all of the things that I’m buying, and I really can’t do without any of them,” to which you reply, “Well, why don’t you trying cutting just $850 out of the $36,000 that you’ve planned to spend in 2013. You’ll still be spending more than you spent in 2012, just not quite as much more, and you’ll be increasing your overall indebtedness by about $11,000 instead of about $12,000. At least it’d be a start.”

Now imagine that Sam says, “I just can’t. I spend a big chunk of what I earn to make interest payments on the debt I already have. I can’t stop making those payments, and I also can’t do without anything that I’m planning to buy this year. I’ve grown accustomed to having all of these things, and they go up in price every year. They’re needs, not wants, and I have to spend the whole $36,000, or else my entire life will fall apart. I’ll be in worse shape if I cut the $850 than if I go ahead and spend it. It really doesn’t make much of a difference whether I end up owing $171,000 or $172,000 at the end of the year. I’ll pay it back eventually. I’ll earn more.”

Imagine yourself then saying, “Look, Sam, you’ve gotta face reality. When you get to the point where nobody will lend you money at affordable interest rates, you’re going to have to quit borrowing ‘cold-turkey.’ There won’t be any time to do it gradually. Right then, you’ll have to start spending only what you earn – less than that actually, because you’ll still have to make payments on your debt – and even if you can earn more somehow, realistically, you’re not going to be able to earn anywhere close to what you’re spending, at least not anytime soon. If you think that cutting $850 now will be too painful, imagine having to cut more than $12,000! Talk about your life falling apart – you might actually become suicidal at that point. You simply can’t continue this lifestyle.”

Now, if you go back through the above story and add eight zeros to each figure, Sam is actually Uncle Sam, i.e. the U.S.A. His annual earnings approximate the federal government’s tax revenues. His slight increase in earnings from 2012 to 2013 approximates the effect of recent income-tax increases. His spending approximates annual federal spending. The difference between his spending and his revenues approximates the federal budget deficit. His total accumulated debt approximates the national debt. And your proposed $850 reduction in his planned 2013 spending approximates “sequestration.” If you’re thinking, “The situation can’t really be that bad!” it’s that bad. In fact, if you take the eight zeros back off and imagine again that this were a regular guy named Sam, he would have had to declare bankruptcy long ago.

The only thing that has allowed Uncle Sam to live an unsustainable lifestyle longer than regular-guy Sam could is Uncle Sam’s ability to print his own money. But even that’s not sustainable in the long run, because each dollar Uncle Sam prints without actually creating any additional value makes every dollar worth less – not worthless, not yet anyway, but worth less. Eventually neither lenders nor sellers of goods and services will want to accept payment in Uncle Sam’s worth-less, if not worthless, dollars, and when that happens, the borrowing ends and life-threateningly painful spending cuts happen immediately.

At that point, forget inconveniences like waiting in line a little longer at an airport or not being able to tour the White House on your spring-break trip to Washington, D.C. (neither of which, by the way, would need to happen as a result of sequestration if it were managed responsibly – yet another reason why it would’ve been nice to have some management experience in the White House). Americans will be forced to live through what the citizens of Greece are living through now, complete with the fear, despair and civil unrest that accompany the abrupt discontinuation of government programs, subsidies and services upon which millions of people have become overly reliant.

Just as for regular-guy Sam, the choice for Uncle Sam, i.e. for “us,” is the choice between elective, predictable, manageable pain now and involuntary, unpredictable, life-threatening trauma later. Will “later” come in your lifetime? Probably, but if not, how much the worse to foist the trauma upon our children, who, as yet, have had no say in choosing our unsustainable national lifestyle? The story of “Unsustainably-Spending Sam” is simple enough that even our children could understand it, so why can’t – or won’t – a majority of us? As with most of our nation’s problems, perhaps it’s because we’ve ceded both our culture and our country to short-term self-gratification seekers, which, too, is unsustainable. The time to take them back – by reasserting personal and national responsibility – is now.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/like-uncle-sam-with-8-fewer-zeroes/feed/0'Tough love' – the solution to violencehttp://www.wnd.com/2013/02/tough-love-the-solution-to-violence/
http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/tough-love-the-solution-to-violence/#respondWed, 06 Feb 2013 01:20:01 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=363255Beginning in earnest with the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., last summer and reaching a fever pitch since the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., in December, we Americans have been bombarded with a cacophony of “experts” and politicians telling us what we “must” do to prevent the next such tragedy. Clinicians have told us that we “must” spend vastly more on public mental-health services, and policymakers have told us that we “must” place further limits on our right to bears arms.

Bits and pieces of the above – like reconstituting our state mental hospitals, wherein chronically dangerously unpredictable patients can be committed indefinitely, and like stitching together the tattered patchwork that has been our “national” background check system for firearms purchases – merit consideration, but they don’t address the essence of the problem. So, my fellow Americans, please, as both a psychologist and an attorney, allow me to respectfully explain the essence of the problem and of the solution.

We really don’t need to build an ambitious new mental-health infrastructure to attempt to identify the perpetrators of horrendous violence before they commit it. You see, the perpetrators of horrendous violence virtually always identify themselves, well in advance, by committing non-lethal violent crimes. Likewise, we really don’t need to substantially limit the rights of law-abiding citizens to prevent such relatively low-grade violence from escalating. All we really need to do is intervene, decisively and longitudinally, when individuals first self-identify as dangerous, for whatever reason(s) – mental illness, sociopathy, or some combination of the two.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’ve heard that the Aurora and Newtown shooters didn’t have criminal records. But the fact someone hasn’t been convicted of a crime doesn’t mean that he hasn’t committed one. It doesn’t even mean that he hasn’t been caught committing one. In the cases of individuals who ultimately commit horrendous violence, what it usually means is that they haven’t been prosecuted for behavior that was both criminal and indicative of an escalating pattern of dangerous unpredictability. Which brings me to the essence of the problem: misplaced “compassion.” Allow me to illustrate using a couple of more recent tragedies.

Just this past weekend, Eddie Ray Routh allegedly gunned down “American Sniper” Chris Kyle and another man at a Texas shooting range and fled the scene in Kyle’s vehicle. Routh reportedly has one conviction on his record, a DUI, yet has been involved in multiple domestic-violence incidents and threatened to kill his family just this past September. On that occasion, local police apparently were called, but instead of taking Routh to jail, they took him to a mental hospital. The mental hospital then discharged him after a few days when he was no longer threatening anyone. The family apparently didn’t press criminal charges, not for the alleged threats and not for the alleged burglary of their home on a different occasion. The cops, the clinicians and the family probably all thought that they were doing the “compassionate” thing by not confining Routh longer.

Now, two people are dead, and Routh’s life is effectively – and quite possibly literally – over as well. Back in September, when he allegedly threatened his family’s lives, the truly compassionate thing would’ve been to have charged him with felony criminal threat, one count for each family member, prosecuted him, and either sentenced him to the maximum term for each family member, consecutively, or, if he truly appeared mentally ill, deferred prosecution upon the condition that he completed a long-term inpatient treatment program at a V.A. hospital. Either way, he wouldn’t have been available to kill anybody this past weekend, and he’d still have a future of his own.

Mental-health treatment for dangerously unpredictable individuals is fine, but public safety is paramount, which means getting such individuals off of our streets until such time, if ever, as they’ve established track records of predictability. Given those individuals’ constitutional rights, it’s tough for mental-health professionals to accomplish that for longer than a few days. That’s why the criminal-justice system, not the mental-health system, is our primary public defense. When people engage in criminal behavior, they essentially give us a “door” through which to intervene in their lives, and filing criminal charges provides us the “key” to that door, allowing a judge to enter into their lives, pass over the threshold of their constitutional rights, and assert societal control over them in the interest of public safety. Please allow me another example.

Last week, Jimmy Lee Dykes forced his way onto an Alabama school bus, shot the bus driver dead, kidnapped a 5-year-old passenger and held the child hostage in an underground bunker for a week before law enforcement executed a successful rescue operation in which Dykes was killed. Just this past December, Dykes reportedly had been charged with firing a gun at his neighbors, the latest in a long history of prior threatening gestures that went unreported or uncharged. He had also reportedly beaten a neighborhood dog to death with a pipe, yet he was allowed to remain free pending a court date set for the day after the murder and kidnapping. The judge probably thought that he or she was doing the “compassionate” thing by not incarcerating Dykes in December. But there’s a broader point here.

People begin horrendous violence of the type committed by Dykes more often than they actually complete it, because they get stopped – sometimes by cops, sometimes by alert citizens, sometimes by twists of fate. Suppose that the bus driver had overpowered Dykes last week, that nobody had been shot or kidnapped and that Dykes had simply been arrested. Are you confident that we would’ve locked him up for the rest of his life because of what could have happened had he “succeeded”? I’m not. I’m afraid we would’ve charged him with aggravated assault, sentenced him on multiple counts concurrently, held him for a couple of years, maybe less if he acted mentally ill, and then released him back onto the public streets, where he could’ve made another attempt.

Back to Aurora and Newtown. James Holmes, the alleged perpetrator of the Aurora massacre, reportedly threatened a professor at the University of Colorado well before the massacre. As a result, he apparently was banned from that campus. He should’ve been charged with a felony. That way, he could’ve either been held without bail or forced to enter inpatient mental-health treatment, to allow his apartment to be searched for weapons, to authorize open communication between his treatment providers and the court, etc., as conditions of bail. Instead, school officials probably thought that they were doing the “compassionate” thing by not pressing criminal charges against Holmes.

And while we’ll never know for sure, I’d bet $10,000 that Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Newtown massacre, committed prior crimes like theft and battery, at least against his mother. I simply don’t believe that the guns used in the Newtown massacre were the first items that Lanza ever stole from his mother or that shooting her in the face was the first violent act that he ever committed in her home. Mrs. Lanza probably thought that she was doing the “compassionate” thing by not pressing criminal charges against her son, even as she reportedly lamented the fact that she had no parental authority to force him into inpatient mental-health treatment once he had reached adulthood. A criminal court would’ve had that authority.

So, my fellow Americans, the essence of the solution to our nation’s violence problem is to get our compassion back where it belongs: with innocence, first and foremost (including our law enforcement officers – it’s shameful to make them keep chasing down the same people repeatedly), with sickness, secondarily, and with sociopathy, never. As soon as an individual’s criminal behavior indicates that he’s dangerously unpredictable, we mustn’t worry about his future – we must worry instead about the futures of the innocent people whom he may harm. And instead of looking the other way or slapping him on the wrist until he finally ruins lives, we must come down on him immediately, and heavily, and stay on him for a long time.

Actress Lindsay Lohan and singer Chris Brown are currently lower-grade, prominent examples of misplaced “compassion” at work. Does anyone believe that Lohan won’t end up in a tragic, substance-fueled wreck unless she’s forced to curtail her substance abuse? And does anyone believe that Brown won’t eventually maim or kill somebody unless he’s forced to contain his anger? And if/when those predictable tragedies happen, “expert” clinicians and policymakers will wring their hands and bloviate about how publicly funded “rehab” or “anger management” counseling or gun control would’ve helped, when in fact, all concerned probably would’ve been far better served had we simply locked those two up, for considerable periods of time, right about … now.

Go back to Columbine, Virginia Tech, or virtually any other incident of horrendous violence in recent memory, and you’ll find that we blew chances to neutralize the perpetrators. How? By sparing them the consequences of lesser crimes that they committed. The truth, America, is that it’s relatively rare in life to help people long-term by sparing them the natural consequences of their behavior – whether they’re sociopaths, mentally ill, or a little of both – yet that’s what we’ve been progressively doing over the past few decades. If we continue to do this, we’ll continue to get more of the same, regardless of whatever other “feel-good” programs and policies we implement.

Yes, that means we need to build more prisons and increase the capacities, while decreasing the costs, of the prisons that we already have. And yes, that means we need to rebuild state mental hospitals for those who require an institutional setting that isn’t correctional. But no, we don’t need to raise taxes to accomplish those things. We just need to realign priorities. Government has no higher duty than to protect the public from physical attack. In short, “tough love” all around is the solution to America’s violence problem.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/tough-love-the-solution-to-violence/feed/0Where have all the journalists gone?http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/where-have-all-the-journalists-gone/
http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/where-have-all-the-journalists-gone/#respondSat, 12 Jan 2013 00:55:31 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=346205When left-leaning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. and I agree that something’s bad, you know it’s really bad. Pitts and I both have criticized the Journal News, an Upstate New York paper, for recently publishing the names and addresses of all registered gun owners residing in its circulation area (and the tabloid website Gawker has since done the same in New York City). It was a reckless, propagandistic stunt with no significant news value which served no public interest and instead compromised the collective security of gun owners and defenseless citizens alike.

Apologists have argued that the information could be helpful to parents who want to make sure that their children don’t play unsupervised at the homes of friends whose parents might have guns lying around. The paper did not, however, also publish the names and addresses of all homeowners in the area who have backyard swimming pools, which statistically pose a much higher risk of death to unsupervised child visitors. The paper didn’t even publish the names and addresses of all registered sex offenders in the area, who’ve actually proven themselves to be risks. No, the paper saw fit to publish only the names and addresses of registered gun owners.

While registration doesn’t guarantee that a gun will never be involved in a crime (Adam Lanza stole his mother’s guns to perpetrate a massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school last month), it’s a safe bet that most people who are averse to committing misdemeanors by not registering their guns are also averse to committing felonies with those guns. That notwithstanding, the clear underlying intent of publishing registrants’ names and addresses was to frighten readers of “the gun next door” as New York and the nation debate new restrictions on gun purchases and possession in the wake of the Connecticut tragedy.

As a psychologist and national news pundit, I believe that what the Journal News did in this instance is symptomatic of a broader shift in the mentalities of people who’ve been drawn to journalism as a profession in recent years. Previous generations of journalists, harkening all the way back to the “town criers” of old, understood that it was fundamentally their job to tell people what other people, including the powerful, were doing. The very publication/broadcast of such information, particularly alerting the citizenry to corrupt behavior of public officials, has always had the potential to mobilize the listening/reading/viewing public to action, and in doing so, has operated as a check on government. Indeed Alexander Solzhenitsyn once equated skilled writers to another branch of government, sometimes referenced historically as the “Fourth Estate.”

So what’s changed? I believe that past generations of journalists understood their job as to expose facts of reasonable public value, fully and unadulterated, to public view so that the public would be informed and could, if so inclined, mobilize accordingly. I believe that too many of today’s journalists, however, begin with particular, ideologically driven ends in mind – they understand their job as to expose facts, whether of reasonable public value or not, selectively and strategically, to public view so as to maximize the likelihood that the public will mobilize in a particular way. In short, too many of today’s journalists, particularly those with expansionist views of the power that secular social institutions should exert in the lives of individuals generally, appear to make little distinction between reportage and editorial.

I’m a university faculty member, and all one need do to corroborate my contention is visit a university campus and ask aspiring journalists why they want to be journalists. Fifty years ago, I believe that you would’ve gotten a majority of responses along the lines of, “Because I want to help make sure people have accurate information so they can make informed decisions about how to live happy, healthy, productive, free lives.” Today, I can caution you to expect a lot of responses along the lines of, “Because I want to help change the world.” And if you follow up and ask what it means to “change the world,” you’re likely to get responses along the lines of, “I want to help people understand that we need to (insert secular-social-institutional-expansionist objective here).”

To some, that distinction may seem minor, but it’s major; it’s the distinction between a passion for accurate reporting and a passion for propagandizing. There certainly are places for news analysis, commentary and editorial. I’ve made a name for myself performing those functions in the national media, but in doing so, I present myself as an analyst/commentator/pundit, not as a reporter. The conflation of reportage with editorial extends far beyond New York; it’s pervading journalism nation- and world-wide, and it’s diminishing both the public’s trust of the media and the efficacy of the “Fourth Estate” as a check on power. And, at this time of unprecedented expansion of government and of the accompanying public debt, it’s not healthy for the nation.

Where have all the journalists gone? We need them back.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/where-have-all-the-journalists-gone/feed/0Obama: A 'CEO' who hasn't learned a thinghttp://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obama-a-ceo-who-hasnt-learned-a-thing/
http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obama-a-ceo-who-hasnt-learned-a-thing/#respondWed, 31 Oct 2012 00:23:14 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=297899Despite dedicating a substantial amount of my professional time to cable news punditry in recent years, I continue to teach a university course on management and to provide coaching and consultation to executives in industries ranging from health care to financial services, and I generally don’t recommend that people – even very smart people – be given CEO positions as their first jobs in management. As one moves his or her way up through the managerial ranks of organizations, progressively taking on responsibility for overseeing and coordinating the work activities of more and more people, one learns certain lessons that are generally prerequisites of success at the CEO level.

In my experience, this is fairly obvious to most participatory shareholders in American corporations, but in 2008, it apparently wasn’t obvious to most “shareholders” in America – its voters – who essentially hired President Barack Obama to serve as the country’s “CEO” with little or no executive experience. Now, four years later, those same voters have an opportunity to evaluate the president’s performance and to decide whether to retain or replace him in the job. As they prepare to participate in that process, I recommend that voters review certain lessons, such as the following – lessons best learned prior to assuming the mantle of a CEO – and assess whether the president has since mastered them.

Lesson No. 1: A successful CEO is both effective and efficient. When President Obama took office, his foremost mandate essentially was to develop and execute a “turnaround” strategy for America. Key benchmarks for the president’s effectiveness in this regard include employment and economic growth, both of which have remained chronically anemic. Thus, the president’s tax-and-spend strategy has been profoundly ineffective. That strategy has also been profoundly inefficient, ballooning America’s annual deficits and national debt to historic proportions that threaten the long-term fiscal health of the nation.

Lesson No. 2: A successful CEO makes tough choices. When President Obama took office, he essentially told Americans that neither he nor they had to make any tough choices – that he could massively expand government without massively expanding the deficit and the debt – and then proceeded to expand all three without so much as a budget, let alone a balanced budget. Budgets require tough choices between competing priorities. Only recently has the president even discussed a budget – a budget predicated upon employment-stifling tax increases and which would still be nowhere near balanced.

Lesson No. 3: A successful CEO thrives on competition. When President Obama took office, he promised to make health care affordable for all Americans, sacrificing neither the quality nor the quantity of available care, essentially by reducing – perhaps ultimately eliminating – competition in the health-care industry. While the president’s plan has yet to be fully implemented, successful CEOs know that enhancing free-market competition would be far more likely to maintain quality, encourage innovation and control costs – that government never has given American consumers better, more-abundant and less-costly goods or services than the competitive free marketplace has.

Lesson No. 4: A successful CEO projects strength. When President Obama took office, he essentially diverged from past presidents and pursued a more apologetic, conciliatory approach to America’s adversaries around the world – “speaking softly and carrying a small stick” (as opposed to the “big stick” advised by President Theodore Roosevelt). Successful CEOs know that when you allow yourself to appear weak, the only way to convince others that you’ll project strength is to actually project it. The better strategy – articulated by President Reagan as “peace through strength” – is to avoid having to project strength by appearing consistently and unequivocally willing to project it.

Lesson No. 5: A successful CEO attends to multiple priorities simultaneously. When President Obama took office, he seemed, and has continued to seem, excessively focused on engineering a government takeover of the health-care industry and on redistributing wealth. Successful CEOs know that even when you have personal priorities, you still need to attend to organizational priorities – to make sure, for example, that your State Department isn’t saying no to its diplomats’ requests for additional security overseas, and that your Justice Department isn’t sending assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels (otherwise, you can end up with murdered diplomats and murdered Border Patrol agents).

President Obama argues that when he took office nearly four years ago, America’s problems were so big that no president could have accomplished more than he has. I disagree. If he had mastered certain lessons, such as the ones above, prior to taking office – or even in office – I think he could’ve accomplished far more. In other words, if the president knew how to solve America’s problems, I think he’d be solving them by now.

He may very well have done his best, but the learning curve from entry-level manager to CEO is steep, and we simply can’t afford four more years of on-the-job training for this president. Fortunately, there’s another candidate interested in the job, a candidate whose career indicates mastery of the lessons above and many others, which portends, in my professional judgment, a far greater likelihood of success in the position. Now more than ever, executive experience matters.